by Lena Fox
For the whole flight, I couldn’t stop looking at the ring on my finger. It was more beautiful and inspiring than the azure sky and toy-town world out the window. I looked at it, amazed in knowing it was really there. That Blake knew everything, and hadn’t rejected me. That I had been brave enough to say yes, to admit my love, to accept being loved.
I still had fear. Lots of it. But I wasn’t going to run away anymore.
I held my hand in front of my face, admiring that bright stone. “Do you ever look at a cut gem, like a perfect diamond, and think of how much surrounding gem was cut away and turned into waste to make this shape?”
Blake smiled at my musings. “I don’t think I ever have.”
“I think it has to be done, those brutal cuts, that loss, to show the beauty within. To make it shine like that.”
He kissed my forehead and held my hand, and I knew that he understood me completely.
I placed my other palm over my breast and pressed softly, feeling that lump under the skin. I wanted to curse it, but I knew without it I wouldn’t have had all these amazing experiences. I wouldn’t have met Blake, or Kaley, or Priya.
Those silver linings could be so fucking ironic.
Without the lump, would Julie would still be alive? I held the weight of her death in my hands, and I held her in my heart. She wouldn’t have been at that intersection if not for me, but I didn’t make it rain. I didn’t drive the truck that crashed into us. I didn’t speed in that rain and lose control. When I broke down all the moving parts I could almost believe it wasn’t my fault she died. Life was so complex, a series of coincidences and luck, good decisions and bad decisions, and accidents and life-changing moments. Asking ‘What if?’ couldn’t change anything. We had to work with what we had. If that accident hadn’t happened, if Julie hadn’t died, I might never have told Dad about the lump, never got tested. I might have continued down that self-destructive path. Losing Julie was a tragedy, but I couldn’t change it and I couldn’t hate it because it was a part of my life.
I think I was starting to understand what Dad had meant about lemons now. I was learning to love the lemons, not just the lemonade.
Dad loved his fruit metaphors. He once said being a parent was like growing tomatoes. If you didn’t tie the plant to a support, it became a sprawling mess, its fruit spoiling in the dirt. But you couldn’t make the ties too tight, or they would break the fragile stems, and there would be no fruit at all.
Dad used to drive me nuts, always wanting to hang my art projects on the refrigerator, or telling every diner in his restaurant about his beautiful daughter. I had never stopped to wonder what it would have been like for me without his approval, without his sincere interest in me and the things I found fascinating, without his unblinking support and care throughout my treatment.
I remembered the time he had made me beetroot and ricotta sandwiches on warm focaccia bread at two a.m. because I had woken up sore, itchy from radiation burns, and with this incredible craving for beets and cheese.
He had always been there for me, not just my dad, but a good dad. The best.
I missed Mom, but it was an abstract emotion based on the feeling that a kid needed a mother. Dad had been everything I needed.
It was going to break his heart if I had cancer again. I didn’t want him to come to hear the results with me. But I had to let him. I had to give him the respect owed such a good father, and I had to let him father me.
As soon as we got home, I called the hospital to make an appointment for the next morning. Then I called Dad, and spent an hour on the phone with him.
Being home again warmed my heart. I loved the potted geraniums and peeling paint. I loved my gigantic unicorn and its little narwhal friend. I loved my freezer filled with leftovers from Dad’s restaurant. It was home. It was the place I lived, where my best friend had lived, where my new friends would live as long as they needed to. Coming home to Priya and Kaley felt right, telling them what was happening in my life felt right. Their excitement at my engagement news felt awesome, and when they insisted on coming to the hospital with us the next day as well, it felt right to let them.
Blake stayed with me in my room that night, and I realized we’d never shared my bed. I’d always run away to his place. It felt good welcoming him there, into my life, completely.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Georgina
When I was a little girl, I pretended to be a princess a lot of the time. I would wrap the long scarves my mother had worn over her head during chemo around my waist and shoulders, like they were my mantles and my wedding gowns. Those scarves had stayed with me during my own chemo.
They had all eventually fallen apart. The only one still left intact was made from filmy green silk printed with weirdly shaped, giant yellow birds. I asked Dad once where Mom had gotten it, thinking there must be a story there, but he said it was just something she had liked in a store.
As a kid, I’d made up my own stories for that scarf—how it reminded her of the tropical vacation she had taken and never told Dad about, or of the pet parrot she’d had when she was a kid living on a pirate ship. At this point in my life, I figured it had just struck her as quirky and when your life was at stake, you often needed something to smile at.
I wore that scarf when I walked into the Breast Cancer Care Center to get my results. So that Mom would be with me. Just like Dad was, and Blake, and Kaley, and Priya. I was guarded and loved on all sides.
We told the woman at reception I was there, then took our seats to wait. Dad and Blake sat either side of me, and Kaley and Priya sat opposite us. I unwound the scarf from my neck and laid it across my lap, petting it like a cat.
“I never liked that scarf,” Dad grumbled, staring at it. “Used to make me think of flying mucus.” He reached over and patted it as well. “Now it just makes me think of your mom. She’d be so proud of you.”
That was when he saw the ring on my finger.
I hadn’t told him on the phone. I’d meant to announce it as soon as I saw him this morning but got distracted. Impending results from a cancer test were a bit distracting.
“Blake proposed at Niagara,” I confirmed nervously. I was worried what he’d say—that we were too young or it was too soon or that it was a reaction to intense circumstances. And maybe it was all those things, but it was also our choice.
“Spontaneous indeed.” He muttered something about tomatoes and then put his arm around my shoulders. “Congratulations. I think it’s beautiful.” Tears filled his eyes as he looked from me to Blake. “You’re both beautiful together.”
I wrapped my arms around Dad’s neck and let his bushy eyebrows tickle my cheeks.
Blake put his hand on my knee, and I could feel his fingers shaking. Across the narrow floor, Kaley’s knees jittered the way they had when I’d first met her and she was getting tested herself. Priya chewed on a fingernail.
I felt still, and calm. Not hard like a stone or locked into invisible armor. This was different. It was acceptance.
I had woken in my bed that morning in Blake’s arms, surrounded by a giant rainbow unicorn and a cute plushy narwhal, with a smile on my face. We were almost late for the appointment because I didn’t want to get out of that bed. Not from fear. From losing track of time with me in Blake’s arms and him inside me.
I still felt that warmth spreading through me.
The lemon-yellow waiting room had large vases of fake sunflowers in every corner, and the Breast Cancer Care Center logo was etched into the windows and painted large on the wall above the reception counter. It was a simplified bust of Botticelli’s Venus. I nodded at her sure, accepting smile.
“You look like her,” Kaley said. “I don’t know how you do it. Babe, I was curled up on the floor crying when I came in for my results, and that was after I got the all clear.”
“She’s not kidding,” Priya said.
“I’m sure it will be fine though. You’ll be fine. It will be fine. This is going to be fine
.”
I smiled at Kaley’s rambling and just shrugged.
When I was fifteen I had searched for signs and portents. I had stared at the receptionist, tried to read the expressions on the faces of nurse’s or doctor’s, thinking a frown thrown my way would mean the worst, or that a secret smile meant good news awaited me.
Not anymore. I was ready to accept either outcome. We all lived. We all died. Our whole galaxy would someday be nothing but stardust, and it was terrible and awe-inspiring.
Could I be fine with that?
“Everything dies. Everything changes. In the greater scheme of things, does any of this matter?”
Blake stared down at me, silent. Then he asked, “How do you feel, right now?”
I looked around at my entourage, so scared for me, caring so much for me. “Loved. Happy. Alive.”
“Then that matters.”
Kaley awed and Priya hugged her. She whispered, “We matter.”
It might be easier if everything didn’t matter. Nihilism had its upsides. But mattering made it all worth it.
I would make every moment of my life matter.
Images of a wedding day filled my mind along with the realization that holy shit, I’d agreed to get married. Being with Blake forever was one thing, a sort of inevitable truth, but the realization that there would be a wedding had just caught up to me. Regardless of what happened next, with my results, there might be a wedding, there might be me moving in with Blake or him with me, or finding a new home together. There might be us, having a family. There were so many what-ifs and maybes and hopes ahead of me.
I thought I was done with lists, but my mind was filled with the future. I pulled a pen and my black journal from my bag and started to draft one final list. The last list I’d need for the rest of my life.
Next to those words, I sketched a little bald lion.
“Georgina? Georgina Stone?” A young female doctor looked up from her clipboard, seeking a response from the nervous crowd in the waiting room. Dad still had his arm over my shoulders and Blake had his arm around my waist. They both squeezed their love into me.
I am Georgina Stone. I am strong—stronger than I ever knew. I am loved. I am brave. It will be okay.
Whatever came next. Whatever life threw at me.
I was ready.
The End
A Note from the Author
Georgina’s story isn’t about getting to a classic happily-ever-after. It’s about life, and every moment, up and down. For me, ending her story before she receives her results felt right. Getting her results isn’t the big finale. It’s just another moment in the beautiful, terrible, rapturous, and tragic, miracle of life. And she’s realized that. She’s accepted that, whatever the results. And that’s the point where the story ends.
But I know some of you will need more closure than this ending offers, and for you, I have written that ending. If you must know what happens next, or just need some warm-fuzzies, you can access a bonus epilogue scene on my website with the following address and password:
lenafox.com/foreverbonus
Password: hea
Many authors say to ‘write what you know’, and this is that story for me. I’ve had cancer at a young age. I still suffer the fear and medical anxiety it left me with. Many of the moments in this duology are based on my direct personal experiences. And other moments are purely wild fantasy. It’s up to you to guess which is which.
I hope that Georgina’s story has meaning to you and your journey through this crazy thing called life.
Now here’s your Public Service Announcement section—I was twenty-six when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, completely out of the blue. I was healthy in all other ways, with no family history. Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It can happen to anybody at any time. Self-check, get screened, if in doubt talk to your doctor. You and your life are valuable and miraculous. Savor every moment. Make it last.
Love the lemons, not just the lemonade.
Need More Romance in your Life?
Kitty is an out of work actress. Owen is a vampire who can’t get enough of her delicious blood. Can she make him see her as anything other than just food? Their relationship will change them both in ways they’ll never expect.
Start reading the Vampire Temptations Series for free now.
A Thank You to My Readers
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Copyright Information
First published by Lena Fox, July 2018
The Forever List copyright © 2018 Lena Fox
All rights reserved.